


Porphyria

by Caesia390



Series: Incomplete Alternate Universe Musings [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:44:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caesia390/pseuds/Caesia390
Summary: A troubled young man inherits an ancient estate, laden with secrets. He harbors secrets of his own. His best friends are a progressive young woman adept at solving puzzles and a friendly, humble everyman. Meanwhile there's that strange portrait in the attic, and the rumors of the wolf man persist. Victorian psychology, technology, and mysticism, oh my.
Series: Incomplete Alternate Universe Musings [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642060
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

***

It started with the book.

Miss Granger said, ‘Oooh! Clever!’ Her gloved fingers heedless of the dust, as they were of any dust that graced a thing of Learning.

The man who called himself Voldemort had been an Alchemist.

‘Aren’t those extinct?’ asked Ronald, who’d been absorbed in South American maps and shadow boxes full of moths’ wings.

Miss Granger shook her head and caressed the binding, and that was the last she would acknowledge them until she’d sucked dry the juices from the hand-written, leather-bound journal.

The next day, she was smiling. She’d caught the secret; her eyes gleamed.

***

It started with the letter.

To Mister Harold James Potter

Regrets and condolences and inheritance, and Harry was sick of this already, gifts from the dead, and Ron was green with envy, and Miss Granger said, ‘I didn’t know you had an uncle.’

‘Second cousin,’ Harry said. ‘Lives – lived – in Africa. He’s the one who sent the cycle.’ The one who never rescued me.

Ron gasped in remembered admiration, and Hermione snorted her disapproval.

But, ‘Doesn’t sound like a solicitor, this R. J. Lupin,’ Ron pointed out. ‘Doesn’t write in mechanisms, like my brother Percy.’

The letter said: Grimmauld Place.

***

It started with the house.

‘Lupin bloke said your uncle never even visited it after his parents died.’

It was grandeur soured by neglect.

Harry wanted to turn around when he saw it (weak, nervous, feminine constitution). But Hermione found the library, and Ron literally stumbled into the Study, and his friends were so caught up in the excitement that they wouldn’t have understood Harry’s apprehension, had he dared to voice it, had he himself not denied his fear.

It was easy to pretend, until darkness and solitude, until Harry drew the last dustsheet to uncover his twin, painted grin.

***

It started with the portrait.

Not like himself at all, really, once Harry’s heartbeat regained its rhythm, once Harry recollected – bloodless, unkempt, gasping – he was nothing like the serene, composed, confident man in the painting. Not at all.

Only sharing dark hair, verdant eyes.

But the painting seemed to watch him, seemed to know his secrets.

But because Harry was not mad (not anymore; listen to me; I’m well; I’m well), he would not surrender to the fear of a painting.

And so the smirk remained uncovered, triumphant as Harry bustled about his own house, averting his eyes.

I’m well.

***


	2. Chapter 2

October 6, 1895

Dearest Aunt Petunia,  
I am feeling well and gladdened to be at school again. Life is more tumultuous here, it’s true, and it would be less than honest of me if I claimed not to miss our teas. I am ever grateful for the care you have shown me my whole life, since taking me in.

I hope you are not lonely in Surrey. Mrs Figg is fond of you, and though I know you find her a trifle peculiar, I hope you will accept her offer of company some time. It cannot be easy, living alone. Her cats are not so much of a nuisance, and anyway you can write me about all the strange collections in her parlour.

Please don’t believe the doctors. I am fine, and I’ll prove it to you. I have renewed my friendships with Ronald Weasley and Miss Granger, and they were both quite ecstatic to see me in better health, and they distract me admirably whenever my spirits show the slightest hint of descending. It is invigorating to be in the world again. I am sure that, when you next see me, you will find you have no cause to worry anymore.

And please don’t inquire so much about Miss Granger. She is a fine girl, more morally strict than any other person I know, save for you. If the both of you didn’t think it an impropriety, I would invite her to visit us some time. As it is, I think Ronald harbours some possessiveness toward her, however he thinks he is unworthy of her, so he would be cross with me in any case.

Give my regards to Miss Weasley. I know she sees you from time to time, and I have no doubt that the two of you gossip about me shamelessly.

Please do not hide yourself away from the world, and if you are ever frightened, know that you cannot be alone because I am here thinking about you.

See you Christmas Holiday.

Your loving nephew,  
Harry

xXxXxXx


	3. Chapter 3

The truest test was Snape’s lectures.

Then, Harry would sit stalk-still on the hard wooden seat and listen to the man drone in that symphonic voice – blood congestants and humours of incubation and the subtle syphilitic sabres of Venereal infection.

It was the poetry of sin, and Harry’s fellow students scribbling away at their notes were deaf to it.

But Harry was also deaf to it – he must be.

Because Snape was a natural, healthy man – probably a Puritan; just look at the way he dressed. Even if he didn’t have a wife (did he?) it was because he devoted himself to nobler suits.

And Harry’s sick fantasies were only that.

He understood that now.

Dr Albus had explained it, had explained everything to him.

Harry could sit in those lectures as still and unfeeling as the glass receptacles Professor Snape clasped with precise and delicate - No.

Harry could sit and listen and learn and feel nothing.

Because he was cured.


	4. Chapter 4

xXxXxXx

The strangest things can happen when we dream.

Our greatest fears and our most fervent fantasies inhabit the night time, the hours when the conscious mind collapses, exhausted, and our baser natures wreak havoc with our senses, unconstrained.

I remember Dr Albus’s warm, bakery-sweet office, his nurturing, wise, paternal eyes, and it is easy to imagine that it was all just a dream. The phantom reality of mania, and I am mad, and the world is still a sensible place beyond my imaginings. Dr Albus’s kind, reassuring, righteous smile assures me. I am sick. But I shall be well again.

But horrors creep in on the daylight, pale negative shadows in the eyes of friends, in the harrowed face that haunts me in the mirror.

This is no dream.

Would that the kind doctors would take me away again, and I could pretend that it were.

…

He woke in an uncomfortable sprawl across the parlour sofa, his clothing twisted and his skin clammy. A body of night-long depravity denied its indulgence.

Morning light shone bleak and mockingly innocent throughout the room. The portrait – its ever-present smirk even more cruel, if possible, in the serene, natural light. You see? the young man seemed to say. I am nothing but oil and canvas. Inanimate. Harmless. And you are raving mad.

Such was the taunting Harry faced. Such was the relief of reality.

He scrubbed his face in a bowl of stale water and willed away the evidence of his phantom tryst.

Nothing had happened.

Even in his dreams, only the warm touch of fabric, the face turning away, the scent and the ink-dark fall of hair and the damning rejection and –

Even in his dreams, unfulfilled.

He noticed a card in the foyer – Mrs Weasley, from her housewarming visit almost two weeks ago. And he remembered – he had agreed to visit Ginevra today.

Harry felt his heartbeat hiccup in both dread and anticipation. Ginevra was a dear friend – she had to be, as she knew and accepted his secrets. A spirited girl, wild and reckless where Ms Granger was more restrained… Ginny knew his secrets and didn’t judge him for them, but she used them, and Harry sometimes regretted paying for his freedom with his peace of mind.

She would know as soon as look at him that he was having… troubles… again.

But sometimes all Harry wanted was to hide as far as possible from that side of himself.

She would suggest that he propose again – a boon for both of them. He would have a marriage that conversely freed him, and Ginevra would have a home in London, away from her family – until she left him for the stage.

Ginny’s plans were always too easy. They were always too extravagant, after her brothers, the twins, had gone to war. After the official dispatch had come, their names listed in the newspaper – after they had died.

Harry didn’t want to be the subject of her desperation. As desperate as he himself was, he only sought its ease.

But he had promised to visit today.

He strove to make his soul a milky antidote to her flame.

…

‘You needn’t have come again.’ They were the first words she spoke to him once her mother had contrived for them to be alone. Her voice was uncommonly low, uncommonly solemn and trembling, and Harry felt fear for he knew not what.

She hid her face under a curtain of auburn ringlets that Harry had absently assumed to be the going style, as little attention as he paid to such things. But now he touched her chin, and at that touch she raised her pallid visage to the hazy post-noon light.

It was as if someone had murdered his Ginny and left only her ghost to greet him. Her eyes were bruised, her burnished lips bloodless, and even her freckles seemed but dust sprinkled over her cheeks. She stared at him with courage, even so, and as she gazed into his eyes, into his horror, she seemed to pity him.

‘Harry,’ she whispered, and then she touched his cheek with cold, gentle fingertips. ‘Harry.’

And while he sat there gaping, words of shock and sorrow meeting the threat of weeping in his throat, she turned her face away again, and her whole soul seemed to retreat.

‘I never understood you,’ she spoke to the window, and her voice was resigned as though she had aged twenty years.

‘I never understood your hesitation,’ she continued in her monotone. ‘But you were right – you were right to fear your own soul.’

xXxXxXx


	5. Chapter 5

It’s a collage, a scrapbook, a collection of personalities and effects.

There’s a tattered, finger-stained newspaper clipping: ‘Wolfman Ravages Cheapside,’ the text tiny and cramped, and within those smudged black letters, the yellow journalism strives to be even more violent and disturbing than the murders themselves. The printing press doesn’t accommodate photographs, so the reporters may be liberal with their verbal gore. Lascerations and blood-soaked alleyways and the insinuations, just short of indecent, of violent sexual abuses beyond the grasp of any healthy imagination. The clipping is pressed into a law ledger as a bookmark. The ledger is the property of R. J. Lupin, nominal solicitor, formerly in the employ of the wealthy and eccentric bachelor Sirius Black, now deceased. He only sometimes sees the headline now as he thumbs through the book to find a page. Other books have other articles, other flyers and declamations, to mark his place.

It’s merely a coincidence, his fascination with the killer and the gaps in his memory and the nightmares… He never remembers. He can’t feel guilty for what he doesn’t know he’s done.

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

It is a lexicon of Latin, notes in the margins and translations penned in the delicate hand of Miss Hermione Granger:

Clavis Prima est quid adaperit… The First Key is that which opens… carceres caliginosos… the dark prisons… quibus Sulfur coercitum… in which the Sulphur is constrained.

Cross-referenced with the English-writing alchemists:

Being Dead at length, the Spirit flys away  
Washes and purifys the Soul and the Body  
Then a more intense Fire allway perpetuates  
With a cold Fire; it volatilizes not.

She writes, ‘releasing the soul, the essence. Fire is death. The first key is in the basement,’ single-minded and without a thought to the deeper significance of what she does. Hermione has a passion for puzzles; what she doesn’t believe in is tampering with immortality. Her father is a philosopher and her mother a feminist. To her, her intelligence is her right and not the radical departure others perceive it to be. She doesn’t think it’s possible to release the soul any more than she thinks it unsuitable for a woman to even be considering such difficult thoughts.

Right now, though, her intelligence is feeling less like a right and more like a burden. She’s discovered the world outside school, where she was scoffed at but at least tolerated, to be populated more with the likes of her enemy, Draco Malfoy, than the likes of her friends, Harry and Ronald. She works as a clerk, though she is qualified for much more, and her employer belittles her constantly. If she couldn’t retreat to Harry’s house, the house he inherited, where she can lose herself in the puzzle of Alchemy and Architecture, some archaic fancy of generations before – if she couldn’t lose herself briefly in the meaningless intricacies of this puzzle, she feels she would lose her mind entirely.

Harry’s house is fascinating, really, and it’s just like him to not notice a thing. He could probably live here years and years without seeing the secrets, the codes and clues that lie everywhere, hidden in everything. From the ivy wallpaper border in the dining room to the coded layout of the floor tiles in the kitchen, and the library..! She does worry about Ronald, though. He’s been making noises as if he’s inclined to ask for her, and Hermione’s been feeling so overwhelmed lately she’s afraid that, in a moment of mutual madness, he might propose and she might accept.

It’s the mathematic precision of astrological tables, the dry cadence of Latin, the intriguing crawlspaces and patterns of Grimmauld Place, that save her.

XXX


	6. Chapter 6

Ms. Granger had worked hard to win acceptance and respect as a female student. Some doubted her mental and emotional capacity to perform, while others harboured grave misgivings about the distraction she presented for the other, ‘serious,’ students. The effect of such prejudices was a somewhat fanatical devotion to rules and propriety in the young woman’s person. Harry and Ron had quickly learned to respect her intelligence and knowledge, which so blatantly outstripped their own, while forgiving her her eccentricities and valuing her friendship. The fact that she was female only made Harry appreciate her struggles even more. Other than that, he had learned to treat her no differently from the other students. He did occasionally wonder, though, whether or not she presented something of a distraction for Ron.


End file.
